Civil Eats

On Saturday it was reported that Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff is stepping down from his position to “pursue opportunities in agriculture in the private sector.” This is not surprising, considering that PA governor Ed Rendell was looking to get rid of Wolff. But now that Wolff is hunting for a job, we thought it valuable here at Civil Eats to revisit why Dennis Wolff is not qualified for the role as head of the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the USDA — a vital position overseeing America’s meat, egg and dairy supply — where he has previously been floated as a candidate. Read More

Inspired by his new book, Wisdom of the Last Farmer, David Mas Masumoto—renowned third-generation California farmer and award-winning author of Epitaph for a Peach—recently moderated a panel discussion at the 92YTribeca in New York City about multi-generational farming life and legacy. (Civil Eats wrote about Masumoto’s new book, and the young farmers who won a copy are here.) Sharing their insights on the connections between families and farming were long-time Greenmarket farmers Cheryl Rogowski of W. Rogowski Farm in Pine Island, New York; Fred Wilklow of Wilklow Orchards in Highland, New York; and Ron Binaghi, Sr. and Ron Binaghi, Jr. III of Stokes Farm in Old Tappan, New Jersey. Read More

Civil Eats is proud to announce the winners of our young farmer’s contest who will receive Mas Masumoto’s new book, Wisdom of the Last Farmer. We hope that this book will inspire you in your work!

We asked our contestants to tell us where they farmed and what kept them going. Check out what they had to say below. Read More

“…the global economy and ecology are both systems. Global causes are systemic, not local. Global risk is systemic, not local. The localization of causation and risk is what has brought about our twin disasters. We have to think in global, system terms and we don’t do so naturally. That is why a massive communications effort is needed.” – George Lakoff

As an ecologically-minded horticulturist, I like to think about everything with an ecological framework. Ecology, simply, is the study of organisms in relation to other organisms and the environment. Many things could be said to be wrong with the state of our nation’s political life, but if there is one to emphasize, it is the lack of a political ecology.  We tend to compartmentalize political issues, along the lines of our individual political identities (sometimes referred to as issues “silos”), and this often negates efforts to connect the dots between diverse issues.

If there is one political identity that should be able to look past these divides and see the importance of ecological connections between movements and struggles, it is that of the environmentalist. The environmentalist’s worldview is steeped in the interdependent view of life; the understanding that one action can cause reactions beyond the expected.  And the most visible (and seemingly the most active) environmentalists, these days, are the food sustainability activists.  Yet even food activists themselves have their silos: urban food access, farmland preservation, nutrition education, and so on. I hope this article will help us see our commonality outside of our silos, and see how to use that to better work towards change. Read More

Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan just sent out a really exciting memo [pdf]: “Harnessing USDA rural development programs to support local and regional food systems,” which goes far beyond fantasies of how a new food system might look, and straight into how this gets both funded and created. Merrigan’s new memo details how to use USDA funding for the kind of projects that are being developed by First Lady Michelle Obama and her food policy team, such as school lunch infrastructure, farmers markets, farm to school programs, cooking classes. Read More

What do you get when you cross a grassroots movement with a food industry fearful of losing its influence? Bogus studies, campaigns of misinformation and opinion pieces filled with myth and vitriol.

You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by “agri-intellectuals”, and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the world through technology.

Though all of this could be disturbing to those of us committed to sustainable agriculture and food that is fair to eaters, animals, workers and farmers, I’m choosing to see this as a good sign. I think it means we might be winning. Read More

While Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently publicly inflamed the health care debate, behind the scenes Whole Foods has been quietly dismantling a key piece of legislation that would make it easier for workers who want to form a union to do so.

Whole Foods and Starbucks are backing a “compromise” to strip the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) of a key provision. The so-called “card-check” provision would require employers to recognize its employees’ union once a majority has signed union authorization cards. Currently, employers often refuse to recognize new unions even if all their employees have signed up. New contracts often take years to negotiate, meanwhile workers are frequently subject to harassment and sometimes fired. The card-check provision is so central to this legislation, it has been called “the card-check bill.” Read More

Amy Hepworth went long tomatoes this year. A farmer in Milton, New York, Hepworth brought new land into production and invested heavily in the crop hoping the effort would help pay for the farm and, in part, help stimulate the local economy. Then came late blight.

Hepworth and her partner Gerry Greco detailed their battle with the air-born fungus when the members of Hepworth’s community supported agriculture (CSA) from Sixth Street Community Center in New York City visited Hepworth Farms two weeks ago. The visit upstate was our first in the long relationship with the organic farm, and as Hepworth and Greco plunged into a discussion on tomato pathology, it seemed the farmers were as excited about the trip as we were. Read More

California is once again at the forefront of national climate change policy. California’s Department of Natural Resources recently issued the nation’s first state-wide strategy of its kind that lays out a blue print for how California should adapt and respond to the impacts of climate change. Many of these impacts, including severe drought, increased wildfires and floods, and prolonged warmer temperatures are already being felt across the state. The plan puts forth key recommendations across seven different sectors, including agriculture.

Unfortunately, the action plan for agriculture leaves out one critical proven strategy for coping with extreme weather events: the promotion of organic agricultural practices that will make soils healthier and more productive, while also conserving water and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The draft adaptation strategy points out what most critics of federal and state climate change legislation constantly fail to acknowledge: That taking no action to address climate change now could cost key sectors in the state “tens of billions of dollars per year in direct costs.” Read More

Civil Eats is thrilled to partner with Camino Restaurant in Oakland, California for our fundraiser on Monday night, part of the Eat Real Festival‘s Keeping It Real dinners. We hope to raise a bit of cash so to help keep our wheels turning over here — until now we haven’t recouped funds through advertising (and want to keep it that way) and have yet to get any steady funding, and in these economic times we’ve kept afloat simply with a strong will to inform you, our dear readers, about the issues facing our food system. Its all about the love, but we gotta eat!

Please, if you are in the Bay Area, come and join us at our fundraiser dinner on Monday evening, and enjoy great food and meet your loyal editors. We will talk shop and inform you about what we’re working on, and it will be an all around smashing time. Promise! And if you are not in the Bay Area, could you pass this along to your friends who are? We appreciate it!

In addition to delicious paella made in the Camino fireplace, and beautiful, local, organic summer produce and cheeses from Andante Dairy and Harley Farms, there will be organic and biodynamic wines. We wouldn’t think of serving real food supporters anything less delicious. Here is the menu as it is looking right now: Read More

In farmer David “Mas” Masumoto’s latest book, Wisdom of the Last Farmer, he looks back on his agrarian life so far. In it, Masumoto focuses primarily on the things he has learned from his father — the things he wishes he’d paid more attention to (like welding) and the things he chose to do differently once he’d taken over his 80 acre peach, nectarine and grape farm near Fresno, California (like transitioning to organic, and making the tough decision to rip out some very old grape vines in order to preserve and nurture others). Meditating on farm legacies seems to have more meaning just now, when his 23 year old daughter, Nikiko, has decided that she too will continue farming Masumoto peaches.

Wisdom of the Last Farmer contains within it a wealth of experience, which make great lessons for young and beginning farmers. It made sense, then, that Mas and Nikiko Masumoto led a workshop together for young farmers last weekend at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown, NY. The workshop gave beginners the opportunity to ask questions of the experienced farmers present, including Stone Barns’ own livestock manager Craig Haney and four-season vegetable grower Jack Algiere. It was also a chance for local apprentice farmers to get to know each other, fostering a sense of farmer community — something Stone Barns hopes to continue building upon. Read More

This morning, I woke up to an NPR report that began like this:

Since the 1980s, American agriculture has become increasingly concentrated. Today, less than 2 percent of farms account for half of all agricultural sales. The new antitrust division of President Obama’s Justice Department has said that scrutinizing monopolies in agriculture is a top priority.

That shift is giving hope to independent farmers, who have complained for years that agriculture giants are shrinking the marketplace and paying farmers less for their products.

Naturally, this got me right out of bed, as I have been reporting on the role competition plays in agriculture of late here on Civil Eats, and because the media barely batted an eyelash when the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent out a press release a week ago about the public workshops that will be held all over the US beginning in early 2010 to find out from farmers about possible anti-competitive behavior in agricultural markets. Read More

It’s not often that I get to write about a positive food policy story coming out of my home state, but it turns out that Oklahoma Attorney General (and Democratic candidate for governor in 2010) Drew Edmondson is suing the more lenient Arkansas poultry industry for its waste, which is polluting the Illinois River on the states’ shared border. This case brings the spotlight to a huge, oft-ignored issue that many legislators in other states should take note of, too: agricultural pollution. Read More

President Obama’s plans to reform the healthcare system in U.S. have taken over the headlines in the past several weeks. Doctors, economists, insurance executives, public health experts—all of them are being afforded the chance add their two cents on how to fix our broken healthcare system. The voices that are strikingly absent, though, are those of the agricultural community. What, you may ask, does agriculture have to do with overhauling the healthcare system? My answer– everything. Read More

Recently, Michael Pollan, author and local food guru, has been the target of attacks from local food naysayers. One, by Missouri Farm Bureau official Blake Hurst in the American Enterprise Institute’s Reason Magazine has gotten a lot of attention.

The article, entitled Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals, goes after the whole local food movement as a kind of effete endeavor by people who don’t know what they are talking about. And since the New York Times alerted its online readers to the article without digging much deeper, I will attempt to do so here. Read More

Canning is hot and sticky (sometimes salty) work. Your fingers go pruny, you get sugar rushes (if you’re making jam) and salt dehydration (if you’re canning savory). Like everything that’s hot, sticky, exhausting, and a little risky, it’s way more fun with friends. Canning has historically been a community venture, with folks pitching in when the fruit and vegetables are abundant. But times have changed, Americans have been taught to be afraid of their own canned foods, “botulsim”, “contamination”, “microorganisms” are the words that come to mind when you mention home canning to most people instead of evoking the joyous sticky deliciousness of homemade jam. Read More

Earth Days, the new film that opened this past weekend from acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone, is being promoted as a history of the environmental movement in the United States. But it’s more of a road trip, really: the road less traveled. The road not taken. The road to hell, blazed by grassroot good intentions that got asphalted and AstroTurfed. Read More

It’s the final weeks here at the Eat Real Festival – the months of tasting and seeking out the very best street food the Bay Area has to offer has come to a close. We’ve now got an incredible roster of over 40 street food vendors, 40 farmers and food purveyors, and 30 microbreweries. When we counted it all up, we realized there were over 200 small, Bay Area businesses participating in this event.

These small business owners take tremendous pride in growing the sweetest tomatoes or watermelons; or serving their patrons the best plate of food that incorporates fresh, local ingredients; or designing the most colorful posters that showcase the vibrancy of the event; or working tirelessly to ensure that everyone has affordable access to Good Food. And they have shown us how committed they are to connecting with one another.

This dedication to Good Food couldn’t be more evident in the effort going behind the August 24^th fundraising dinner we’ve planned for Civil Eats at Camino Restaurant — which will donate a percentage of the night’s proceeds. With a menu featuring paella made right in Camino’s fireplace, and organic, local summer produce and cheeses from Andante Dairy and Harley Farms, it’s an inspirational example of small businesses working synergistically to benefit organizations fighting for fair access and economic opportunity when it comes to Good Food. Read More

Picture an Alaskan fisherman. Now wipe the slate clean. Thea Thomas is a 52-year-old blonde who wears lip gloss and earrings when she heads out on her boat, a fiberglass vessel called the Myrmidon, named after Achilles’ warriors. She holds a Master’s degree in biology and has been fishing commercially for the past 23 years. She’s also one of the “highliners” of the 540-person Copper River fleet, meaning the volume of her catch is among the highest of her peers, all but four of whom are men.

And she wants to keep fishing, too, at least until she retires, which won’t be happening any time soon. “I still really enjoy it,” she says. “I don’t know if other people enjoy it as much as I do.”

But as much as she enjoys her work, and as much as she’d like to maximize her earnings during the open season (which runs from May through September), she understands that some days she simply can’t fish. It’s not that she doesn’t feel like it, or lacks the drive, but that she’s not allowed to. And neither are the other members of her fleet. Read More

Kitchen Table Talks announced its fourth installment of its new conversation series about the American food system, School Food: The Nitty Gritty Details, will be held on Tuesday, August 25 at 6 p.m. at Hotel Vitale in San Francisco.

The topic of school food is challenging and complex. Every day, nearly 30 million children benefit from the National School Lunch Program. However, these meals usually consist of unhealthy processed foods and low grade industrial meat. The Child Nutrition Act which governs the National School Lunch program is up for reauthorization this year, so there is still time to have our voices heard and ensure our children have access to healthy, quality food. Join us as we discuss current policies and programs, challenges and what you can do to get real food in our public schools. Guests speakers include, but are not limited to: Colleen Kavanaugh, Executive Director, Campaign for Better Nutrition and Lena Brook, grassroots parent advocate.

Kitchen Table Talks organizers request a $10 donation to go towards administrative costs. However, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Sustainable, local refreshments will be provided, courtesy of Bi-Rite Market. Space is limited; to reserve your seat, please email ktt@civileats.com or leave a message at 925.785.0713. Please note, this month’s KTT will be held at Hotel Vitale, 8 Mission Street, on the Embarcadero and across from the Ferry Building.

The road to Frog Hollow Farm in Brentwood travels northern California’s Highway 4, a hot and dusty corridor that was once lined with jeweled fields of cherries, peaches and apricots. Roughly 50 miles east of San Francisco on the Sacramento River Delta, this agricultural region is well-known known for its stone fruit and corn. As with most places in the U.S., the landscape here has vastly changed in the past 30 years. Where once farmland reigned, endless rows of strip malls, big box stores, and tracts homes have sprouted, all to support a population explosion. Read More

Two weeks ago, I noticed that two of my tomato plants had late blight. I was up on the roof, weeding, pulling off yellowing leaves from all the excess rain, and harvesting some early tomatoes when I noticed leaves with yellow and brown spots on them. I’d read the article in the New York Times about the blight, and so I sent out the photo on the left to Twitter, asking my followers, “is this the blight?” The answer, sadly, was yes. So I pulled one plant up, before it could spread to the others, and took all the leaves off the other plant which was confined to a corner, hoping to let it’s three giant tomatoes ripen.

Unfortunately, rooftops are not immune from the soil disease that ravages spuds and tomatoes — I bought my seedlings from two small nurseries upstate, which had grown them locally. But it is possible that contamination had already spread to my tomatoes from the nurseries’ neighbors who bought their plants at big box stores like Lowe’s and Wal-Mart, which sold plants in soil from an Alabama facility that carried the blight. Ironically, it is new growers’ enthusiasm that might have exacerbated the disease through increased consumer demand. And while a record number of people are growing some of their own produce this year, excess rain in the northeast has created the perfect conditions for the blight to flourish — but it is small organic farmers that are taking a punch. Read More

Yesterday Secretary Clinton was in Kenya with a delegation that included Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, as well as Representatives Donald M. Payne (D-NJ) and Nita M. Lowey (D-NY). While the group was there on a broad platform to discuss economic development in Africa, including food security issues, the delegation took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to visit the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) lab, which is best known for unsuccessfully trying to produce a genetically modified, virus-resistant sweet potato under a US-led program. The trip to KARI highlights the poor vision the United States currently holds on furthering food security in Africa. Read More

Yesterday, the news wire sparked with some really good news — Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack are joining together to hold public discussions on “competition issues affecting the agriculture industry in the 21st century and the appropriate role for antitrust and regulatory enforcement in that industry.” This is the first time any such talks will have been held on an industry that is massively consolidated and under-regulated.

For example, did you know that in 2006, 83.5% of beef-packing was controlled by 4 companies, same goes for 66% of pork packing, 58.5% of the chicken processing and 55% of turkey processing. Similar numbers exist for the seed companies, the grain processors bringing animal feed to feedlots and HFCS to most of the packaged foods in the supermarket, and the supermarket retailers themselves. Numbers this high indicate a lack of competition. Read More

A few days ago, I listened to a story on NPR about how lobstermen in the Northeast have come up with a business strategy, selling directly to the consumers, cutting out the middlemen. Of course these “middlemen,” the folks that are distributors, that find buyers, or ship to restaurants and supermarkets, are now upset at the loss of business. In their defense, the lobstermen say that unless they can sell directly to the consumer—at real world prices—they cannot make any money and will have to go out of business. Furthermore, the consumers are happier as they like to know whom they’re purchasing from. Read More

Jeffery Betcher was clear — he and his fellow organizers consider themselves community, not food, activists. Betcher, co-founder of the successful Quesada Gardens Initiative in the Bayview Hunters Point Neighborhood of San Francisco, was joined by fellow co-founder and board co-vice chair James Ross as featured presenters at Kitchen Table Talks’ third installment: Community Organizing: Addressing Food Access and Security in Bayview Hunters Point.

For decades, Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) has been much maligned for regular reports of violence, environmental hazards and poverty. Betcher, a 10-year BVHP resident, believes the neighborhood doesn’t deserve its negative reputation. It has many strengths, including the highest rate of residential property ownership in the entire city, and many of its residents are thriving despite enormous environmental and economic injustices. Read More

Today’s world is budding with innovation…brand new systems created by a generation of people that find technology as familiar to their fingers as I find a wooden mixing spoon. We are seeing an emergence of people taking this newness and coupling it with craft, with older, perhaps simpler ways of life. Preserving traditional methods of quality by injecting a bit of adaptive contemporary sheen is introducing what may be a key to saving our planet. A perfect example of this in my own town goes by the clear-cut name of Santa Cruz Local Foods, an online Ebay of sorts where food and technology meet. Essentially, on a weekly schedule, farmers and producers register their items into the database while consumers login to shop. There is a single drop off and pick up location, money is handled through the facilitators of the website, and everyone goes home happy. Read More